LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 






Slielftrij.i._§.;^ 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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A STRING OF AMBER BEADS 



BY 



MARTHA EVERTS HOLDEN 
* 'amber" 



CHICAGO 

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 

1894 




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\ 






■ \ 
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Copyright 1893 by 
Charles H, Kerr & Company 



DEDICA TED 

TO THE LATE 

^nhxtxx^ ^human 

MY LITERARY ADVISER 

AND 

TRUEST ERIEND 



CONTENTS. 

I. "I Didn't Think." 
II. "Stay Where you Are." 

III. A Cowardly Mate. 

IV. They Carry No Banner. 
V. Shut In. 

VI. The Circling Year — a Clock. 
VII. Something Better Than Surface 
Manners. 
VIII. Mind Your Own Business. 

IX. The People Who Make Me Most 
Weary. 
X. Nothing so Grand as Force. 
XI. A Rainy Rhapsody. 
XJI. Cause For Wonder. 

XIII. The First Katydid. 

XIV. A Plea For Men. 
XV. What I'm Tired of. 

XVI. Nothing Like a Good Laugh. 
XVII. Hold! Enough!! 



8 CONTENTS 

XVIII. Ripe Opportunities. 
XIX. A Sunset Cloud. 
XX. One Secret of Success. 
XXI. A New Beatitude. 
XXII. Blessed be Bashfulness. 

XXIII. A Bewitched Violin. 

XXIV. A Hat Pin Problem. 
XXV. Politeness vs. Sincerity. 

XXVI. The Most Dangerous Woman. 
XXVII. Sermons From Flies. 
XXVIII. The Man who Knows It All. 

XXIX. Bald Heads and Unequal Chances. 

XXX. Human Straws. 
XXXI. A Sallow Faced Girl for Your Pity. 
XXXII. And Yet He Clings to Life. 

XXXIII. Oh! To Rid The World of Shams. 

XXXIV. Dress Parade of the Great Alike. 

XXXV. If God Made You a Willow Don't 

Try to be a Pine. 

XXXVI. Two Types. 
XXXVII. A Dream Garden. 

XXXVIII. Anything Worse than a Blue-Jay? 
Hardly! 



CONTENTS 9 

XXXIX. Good Health a Blessing. 

XL. Why, Bless my Soul! It Really 
Seems to Think. 
XLI. Take to Drink, of Course! 
XLII. A Warning to Girls. 
XLIII. A Frog May do What a Man May 

Not. 
XLIV. Thanking God For A Good Husband. 

XLV. Just a Little Tired ! 
XLVI. Painting the Old Homestead. 
XLVII. The Old Sitting Room Stove. 
XLVIII. A Talk About Divorce. 

XLIX. Gone Back to Flippity-Foppity 
Skirts. 
L. I Shall Meet Him Some Day. 
LI. A Mannish Woman. 
LI I. The Only Way to Conquer a Hard 
Destiny. 
LIII. The "Smart" Person. 
LIV. A Pretty Street Incident. 
LV. Policy a Damascus Blade, Not a 
Club. 
LVI. The Constant Years Bring Age to 
All. 



10 CONTENTS 

LVII. Did you Ever Read the "Little 
Pilgrim." 
LVIII. Eating Milk Toast With a Spoon! 
LIX. Boys, You Know I Like You. 
LX. What to do With Growlers. 
LXL God Bless 'Em! 

LXII. "Unto one of the Least of These.'' 
LXIII. Taking Inventory. 
LXIV. Don't Marry Him to Save Him. 



A STRING OF BEADS 

I. 

"I didn't think!" A woman flings the white- 
ness of her reputation in the dust, and, waking 
to the realization of her loss when the cruel 
glare of the world's disapproval reveals it, she 
seeks to plead her thoughtlessness as an entreaty 
of the world's pardon. But the flint-hearted 
world is slow to grant it, if she be a woman. 
"You have thrown your rose in the dust, go live 
there with it," the world cries, and there is no 
appeal, although the dust become the grave of 
all that is bright and lovely and sweet in a 
thoughtless woman's really innocent life. A young 
girl flirts with a stranger on the street. The 
result is something disagreeable, and straight- 
way comes the excuse: "Why, I didn't think! I 
meant no harm; I just wanted to have a little 
fun." Now, look me straight in the eye, young 
gossamer-head, while I tell you what I know. 

11 



12 A STRING OF BEADS 

The girl who will flirt with strange men in pub- 
lic places, however harmless and innocent it may 
appear, places herself in that man's estimation 
upon a level with the most abandoned of her 
sex and courts the same regard. Strong lan- 
guage, perhaps you think, but I tell you it is 
gospel truth, and I feel like going into orders 
and preaching from a pulpit whenever I see a 
thoughtless, gay and giddy girl tiptoeing her 
way upon the road that leads direct to destruc- 
tion. The boat that dances like a feather on the 
current a mile above Niagara's plunge is just as 
much lost as when it enters the swirling, swing- 
ing wrath of waters, unless some strong hand 
head it up stream and out of danger. A flirta- 
tion to-day is a ripple merely, but to-morrow it 
will be a breaker, and then a whirlpool, and 
after that comes hopeless loss of character. 
Girls, I have seen you gather up your roses from 
their vases at night and fold them away in damp 
paper to protect their loveliness for another day. 
I have seen you pluck the jewels like sun spark- 
les from your fingers and your ears, and lay them 
in velvet caskets which you locked with a silver 
key for safe keeping. You do all this for flowers 



A STRING OF BEADS ]3 

which a thousand suns shall duplicate in beauty, 
and for jewels for which a handful of dollars 
can reimburse your loss; but you are infinitely 
careless with the delicate rose of maidenliness, 
which, once faded, no summer shining can ever 
woo back to freshness, and with the unsullied 
jewel of personal reputation which all the wealth 
of kings can never buy back again, once lost. 
See to it that you preserve that modesty and 
womanliness without which the prettiest girl in 
the world is no better than a bit of scentless 
lawn in a milliner's window, as compared to the 
white rose in the garden, around which the honey 
bees gather. See to it that you lock up the un- 
sullied splendor of the jewel of your reputation 
as carefully as you do your diamonds, and carry 
the key within your heart of hearts. 



II. 



I received a letter the other day in which the 
writer said: "Amber, I want to come to the city 
and earn my living. What chance have I?" And 
I felt like posting back an immediate answer and 
saying: "Stay where you are." I didn't do it, 
though, for I knew it would be useless. The 
child is bound to come, and come she will. And 
she will drift into a third-rate Chicago boarding- 
house, than which if there is anything meaner — 
let us pray! And if she is pretty she will have 
to carry herself like snow on high hills to avoid 
contamination. If she is confiding and innocent 
the fate of that highly persecuted heroine of old- 
fashioned romance, Clarissa Harlowe, is before 
her. If she is homely the doors of opportunity 
are firmly closed against her. If she is smart 
she will perhaps succeed in earning enough money 
to pay her board bill and have sufficient left over 
to indulge in the maddening extravagance of an 

14 



A STRING OF BEADS 15 

occasional paper of pins or a ball of tape! What 
if, after hard labor, and repeated failure, she 
does secure something like success? No sooner 
will she do so, than up will step some dapper 
youth who will beckon her over the border into 
the land where troubles just begin. She won't 
know how to sew, or bake, or make good coffee, 
for such arts are liable to be overlooked when a 
girl makes a career for herself, and so love will gal- 
lop away over the hills like a riderless steed, and 
happiness will flare like a light in a windy night. 
Oh, no, my little country maid, stay where you 
are, if you have a home and friends. Be content 
with fishing for trout in the brook rather than 
cruising a stormy sea for whales. A great city 
is a cruel place for young lives. It takes them 
as the cider press takes juicy apples, sun-kissed 
and flavored with the breath of the hills, and 
crushes them into pulp. There is a spoonful of 
juice for each apple, but cider is cheap! 



III. 



I know a wife who is waiting, safe and sound 
in her father's home, for her young husband to 
earn the money single handed to make a home 
worthy of her acceptance. She makes me think 
of the first mate of a ship who should stay on 
shore until the captain tested the ability of his 
vessel to weather the storm. Back to your ship, 
you cowardly one! If the boat goes down, go 
down with it, but do not count yourself worthy 
of any fair weather you did not help to gain! A 
woman who will do all she can to win a man's 
love merely for the profit his purse is going to 
be to her, and will desert him when the cash 
runs low, is a bad woman and carries a bad heart 
in her bosom. Why, you are never really wed- 
ded until you have had dark days together. What 
earthly purpose would a cable serve that never 
was tested by a weight? Of what use is the tie 
that binds wedded hearts together if like a fila- 

16 



A STRING OF BEADS 17 

ment of floss it parts when the strain is brought 
to bear upon it? It is not when you are young, 
my dear, when the skies are blue and every wa}'- 
side weed flaunts a summer blossom, that the 
story of your life is recorded. It is when "Darby 
and Joan" are faded and wasted and old, when 
poverty has nipped the roses, when trouble and 
want and care have flown like uncanny birds 
over their heads (but never yet nested in their 
hearts, thank God), that the completed chronicle 
of their lives furnishes the record over which 
heaven smiles or weeps, 



IV. 



There never yet was a grand procession that 
was not accompanied, or, rather, in great meas- 
ure made up of, followers and onlookers. So in 
this life parade of ours, with its ever varying 
pageant and brilliant display, there are compar- 
atively few who carry banners, who disport the 
epaulette, and the gold lace. And sometimes, 
we who help swell the ranks of those who watch 
and wait, grow discouraged, almost thinking that 
life is a failure because it holds no gala-day for 
us, nothing but sober tints and quiet duties. 
What chance for any one, and a woman espec- 
ially, to make a career for herself, tied down to a 
lot of precious babies, or lassooed by ten thousand 
galloping cares! As well expect arose to blossom 
in midwinter hedges, or a lark to sing in a snow- 
storm, as to look for bloom and song in such a 
life! But just bend down your ear a minute, 
poor, tired, overworked and troubled sister, I 

18 



A STRING OF BEADS 19 

have a special word for you. It is simply im- 
possible for circumstances of any sort to over- 
throw the high spirit of one who believes in 
something yet to come and out of sight. What 
are poverty and adverse fate and mocking hopes 
and disappointed ambition to the soul which is 
only journeying through an unfriendly world to 
a heritage that cannot fall? As well might a 
flower complain of the rains that called it from 
the sod, of the winds that rocked it, and the 
cloudless noons that flamed above it, when June 
at last has lightly laid the coronal of summer's 
perfect bloom upon its bending bough. We 
shall find our June somewhere, never fear. Be 
content then a little longer with uncongenial sur- 
roundings and a life that knows no outlook of 
hope. Be all the sweeter and the stronger and 
the braver that the way is short. To-morrow, in 
the Palace of Love, the dark and unfriendly inn 
that sheltered us for a night upon the way, shall 
be forgotten. 



V. 



Were you ever shut in by a fog? Lost at mid- 
day in a soundless, rayless world of nebulous 
vapor — so seemingly alone in the universe that 
your voice found no echo, and your ears caught 
no footfall in all the vast domain of silence about 
you? The other morning, when I left the house, 
I paused in wonderment at the strange world 
into which I was about to plunge. All landmarks 
were gone, nothing but silver and gray left of 
nature's brilliant tints, not even so much shadow 
as an artist might use to accentuate a bird's 
wing in crayon — no heaven above, no earth be- 
neath. The interior of a raised biscuit could not 
have been more densely uniform than the atmos- 
phere. It seemed as if the world had slipped 
its moorings and drifted off its course into com- 
panionless space, leaving me behind, as an ocean 
steamer sometimes leaves a straggler on an un- 
inhabited shore. I felt like sending forth a call 

20 



j4 string Of BEADS 2\ 

that should give my bearings and bring back a 
boat to the rescue. I groped my v;ay down the 
steps, and, following an intuition, sought the 
station. Ahead of me I heard muffled steps, yet 
saw no form. But suddenly a doorway opened 
in the east and out strode the sun. In the air 
above and about me, behold, the wonder of dia- 
mond domes and slender minarets traced in pearl! 
The wayside banks were fringed with crystal 
spray of downbeaten weed and bush that sparkled 
like the billows of a sunlit sea. The tall elms 
here and there towered like the masts of return- 
ing ships, slow sailing from a wintry voyage 
back to summer lands and splendor. There was 
no sound in all the air, but the whole universe 
seemed singing as when the morning stars chor- 
used th© glory of God. More and more widely 
opened that doorway in the east; step by step 
advanced the great magician, and over all the 
world the splendor grew, until it seemed too 
much for mortal eyes to bear, when lo! a touch 
dispelled it all and commonplace day stood re- 
vealed. 



VI. 



The circling year is a clock whereon nature 
writes the hours in blossoms. First come the 
wind flowers and the violets; they denote the 
early morning hours and are quickly passed. The 
forenoon is marked by lilacs, apple blooms and 
roses. The day's meridian is reached with lilies, 
red carnations, and the dusky splendor of pan- 
sies and passion flowers. Then come the languid 
poppy and the prim little 4 o'clock, the marigold, 
the sweet pea, and later the dahlia and the many- 
tinted chrysanthemum to mark the day*s decline. 
Lastly the goldenrod, the aster and the gentian, 
tell us it is evening time, and night and frost 
are close at hand. The rose hour has struck al- 
ready for '93. The garden beds are full of scat- 
tered petals and the dusty roadways glimmer 
with ghostly blossoms too wan to be roses, and 
wafted by a breath into nothingness. With such 
a calendar to mark the advance of decay and 

22 



A STRING OF BEADS 23 

death the seasons differ from the mortal race 
which substitutes aches and pains for a horologe 
of flowers, and grows old by processes of physical 
failure and mental blight. 



VII. 



There are days when my heart is so full of 
love for young girls that as I pass them on the 
street I feel myself smiling as one does to walk 
by a garden of daffodils. And when I see how 
careful some of them are to be circumspect and 
demure, I think to myself how fine a thing it 
is, to be sure, to have good manners! How 
happy the parent whose young daughter knows 
just how to hold her hands in company, just how 
and when to smile, just how to enter a room or 
gracefully leave it. Easy, indeed, must lie the 
head of that mother who is secure in the knowl- 
edge that her daughter will never make a false 
step in the stately minuet of etiquette, or strike 
a discordant note in the festival of life; that she 
will never laugh too loud, nor turn her head in 
the street, even when the gay and glittering 
"king of the cannibal isles" rides by, nor do 
anything odd or queer or unconventional. To 

24 



A STRING OF BEADS 25 

the mother who believes that good manners can 
be taught in books and conned in dancing schools, 
there is something to satisfy the heart's finest 
craving in a strictly conventional daughter, who 
thinks and acts and speaks by rule, and whose 
life is like the life of an apricot, canned, or a 
music box wound up with a key. But to my 
thinking, my dear, good manners are not put on 
and off like varying fashions, nor done up like 
sweetmeats, pound for pound, and kept in the 
storeroom for state occasions. They strike root 
from the heart out, and the prettiest manners in 
the world are only the blossoming of a good 
heart. Surface manners are like cut flowers stuck 
in a shallow glass with just enough water to keep 
them fresh an hour or so; but the courtesy that 
has its growth in the heart is like the rosebush 
in the garden that no inclement season can kill, 
and no dark day force to forego the unfolding 
of a bud. 



VIII. 

I am more and more convinced the longer I 
live that the very best advice that was ever given 
from friend to friend is contained in those four 
words: "Mind your own business." The follow- 
ing of it would save many a heartache. Its ob- 
servance would insure against ever}' sort of 
wrangling. When we mind our own business 
we are sure of success in what we undertake, 
and may count upon a glorious immunity from 
failure. When the husbandman harvests a crop 
by hanging over the fence and watching his 
neighbor hoe weeds, it will be time for you and 
for me to achieve renown in any undertaking in 
which we do not exclusively mind our own bus- 
iness. If I had a family of young folks to give 
advice to, my early, late and constant admonition 
would be always and everywhere to "mind their 
own business." Thus should they woo harmony 
and peace, and live to enjoy something like the 

completeness of life. 

26 



IX. 



In the ups and downs and hithers and thithers 
of an eventful life shall I tell you the people 
who have made me the most weary? It is not 
the bad people, nor the foolish people; we can 
get along with all such because of a streak of 
common humanity in us all, but I cannot survive 
without extreme lassitude the decorous people; 
those who slip through life without sound or 
sparkle, those who behave themselves upon every 
occasion, and would pass through a dynamite ex- 
plosion without rumpling a hair; those who 
never have done anything out of the way and 
never will, simply for the same reason that a fish 
cannot perspire — no blood in 'em! Cut them and 
they would run cold sap, like a maple tree in 
April. Such people are always frightened to 
death for fear of what the world is going to say 
about them. They are under everlasting bonds 
to keep the peace. I wonder that they ever un- 

27 



^8 A STRING OF BEADS 

bend to kiss their children. If one of them lived 
in my house I should stick pins in him. Moral- 
ity and goodness that lie no deeper than "behav- 
ior" are like the veneering they put on cheap 
tables — very tawdry and soon peeled off. 



X. 

Reading about the superb management of the 
big fire the other day, a certain girl of my ac 
quaintance remarked: "Is there anything so grand 
in a man as force? In my estimation those fire- 
men and the chief who so splendidly controlled 
them are as far superior to the dancing youth, 
we meet at parties and hops, as meat is better 
than foam." Put that into your pipe, you callow 
striplings, who aim to be lady killers! It is not 
your tennis suits, nor your small feet, nor your 
ability to dance and lead the german that makes 
a woman's heart kindle at your approach. It is 
your response to an emergency, your muscle in 
a tilt against odds, your endurance and force, 
that will win the way to feminine regard. As 
for me there is something pathetic in the sight 
of a big, handsome fellow in dancing pumps and 
a Prince Albert coat. I would rather see him 
swinging a blacksmith's hammer, or driving a 



30 A STRING OF BEADS 

plow through stony furrows if need be. The 
"original man" was not created to shine in the 
military schottische or win his laurels in the 
berlin. 



XI. 



Gently, idly, lazily, as petals from an over- 
blown rose, while I write, the welcome rain is 
falling. The sky is neutral tinted, save in the 
east, where a faint blush lingers. All along the 
country roadways a thousand fainting clovers 
uplift their purple crests, and in the dusky 
spaces of the dense June woods a host of grate- 
ful leaves wait and beckon. A voice comes from 
the garden bed; it is the complaint of the pansy. 
"Here I lie," it says, "with all my jewels low in 
the dust. Where is the purple of my amethysts, 
the yellow of my topaz, the inimitable sheen of 
my milk-white pearls? Alas and alack for pan- 
sies when the rain beats them earthward!" The 
marigold, like a yellow-haired boy with his straw 
hat well back from his flying mane, whistles 
softly to himself for joy, and buries his hands 
in the pockets of his green breeches. The peonies 
burn low their tinted globes of light, and the 
31 



32 A STRING OF BEADS 

sweet peas swing like idle girls upon the tendrils 
of their drooping vines. The dog lifts his nose 
and sniffs the moist air approvingly; while poor 
Old Tom, the cat, blinks benignly upon the 
scene. In the poultry yard the hens pose in the 
same indescribable amaze that has bewildered 
their species since the dawn of time. I think 
the first chicken that was ever hatched in Eden 
must have experienced some great nervous shock 
that has descended along the infinite line of its 
progeny. The monotonous rooster chants ever 
and anon from the top of the fence his unalter- 
able convictions. The ducks waddle waggishly 
through the rain and the pigeons coo softl}' the 
mellowest melodies that ever sounded from a 
feathered throat. 



XII. 



I do not wonder so much that so few people 
blossom into sunny old age, as I wonder that 
one-half of humanity ever shows a leaf or unfolds 
a bud. Look at the idiots who have children. 
Look at the little ones thrown into the street 
like troublesome kittens. Look at the injudi- 
cious methods of diet and training. I declare, my 
dear, if I were to go into the room where Theo- 
dore Thomas was rehearsing his orchestra, and 
see the flutists using their flutes for hammers, 
and the violinists using their violins for tennis 
rackets, and the divine old cello in the hands 
of a lusty blacksmith who was utilizing it for an 
anvil, the sight would be nothing to what it is 
to see the muddle we make of the children's 
sweet lives. God meant us for musical instru- 
ments, and gave to each soul its capacity for 
some original harmony. Can a flute keep its tone 
for three score years if you use it for a clothes 
33 



34 A STRING OF BEADS 

stick on wash day, or a violin retain intact the 
angel voice within it if you let rats breed and 
nest in it, fling it against the side of the house 
and dance on it with hob-nailed boots? If an 
instrument subjected to such usage pipes out a 
silver note once in a dozen years, uncover your 
head when you hear it, for it is the original an- 
gel within the mechanism, which nothing can 
kill! 



XIII. 

The first katydid of the season has whipped 
out his bow and drawn the preparatory note 
across the strings of his violin. He is alone at 
present and he plays to an empty house, but it 
will not be long before the orchestra fills up and 
the music is in full blast. The cricket is getting 
ready to throw aside the green baize that has 
held his piccolo so long, and before the middle 
of the month there will not be a tuft of grass nor 
a shelter of low-lying leaves that is not alive with 
the shrill, complaining sweetness of his theme. 
The goldenrod has lighted the candles in the 
candelabra that skirt the borders of the wood, 
and the aster has already hung out her purple 
gown and her yellow laces upon the bushes that 
follow the windings of the steep ravine. Only 
six weeks to frost! Only six weeks to the time 
for the unbottling of the year's vintage and the 
exchange of tea for sparkling wine. Hasten for- 
35 



36 A STRING OF BEADS 

ward; then, oh, days of radiant life and spark- 
ling weather! We are tired of torrid waves and 
flies; of snakes, hornets and cyclones. 



XIV. 

A more or less extended experience as a bread- 
winner has taught me a noble charity for men. 
I used to think that all the head of a family was 
good for was to accumulate riches and pay bills, 
but I am beginning to think that there is many 
a martyr spirit hidden away beneath the business 
man's suit of tweed. Wife and daughters stand 
ever before him, like hoppers waiting for grist 
to grind. "Give! Give!" is their constant cry, 
like the rattle of the upper and nether stones. 
This panegyric does not apply to the man who 
frequents clubs and spends his money on be- 
tween-meal drinks and lottery tickets. It applies 
rather to the unselfish, hardworking father of a 
family, who works early and late to keep his 
daughters like lilies that have no need to toil, 
and to help maintain the ostentation of vain 
display upon which depends the social success 
of a worldly and frivolous wife. It would be far 

37 



38 A STRING OF BEADS 

more to those daughters' credit if they did some- 
thing in the line of honest and honorable toil to 
support themselves, rather than live on the 
heart's blood of an unselfish and overworked 
father; and as for the wife who exacts the in- 
come of a duchess to keep up the silly parade 
of Vanity Fair, there may come a day for her, 
when, shorn of the generous and loving support 
of a good husband, and forced to earn her own 
livelihood, as the penniless widows of bankrupt 
men are sometimes forced to do, she will appre- 
ciate, too late, the blessing that Heaven has 
taken from her. 



XV. 



I am tired of many things. I am tired of the 
miserable little god, "worry," shrined in every 
home. I am tired of doing perpetual homage 
to the same black-faced little wretch. I am tired 
of putting down pride and curbing a righteous 
indignation. I am tired of keeping my hands 
off human weeds. I am tired of crucifying my 
tastes, and cultivating the nickel that springs per- 
ennial to meet my needs. I am tired of poverty 
and all needful discipline. I am tired of seeing 
babies born to people who don't know how to 
bring them up. I am tired of folks who smile 
continuously. I am tired of amiable fools and 
the platitudes of unintelligent saints. I am 
tired of mediocrity. I am tired of cats, both 
human and feline. I am tired of being a sol- 
dier and marching with the advance guard. 
I am tired of girls who giggle and of boys who 
swear. I am tired of married women who think 
it charming to be a little giddy, and of married 
men who ogle young girls and other men's wives. 
39 



40 A STRING OF BEADS 

I am tired of a world where love is like the 
blossom of the century plant, unfolding only 
once in a hundred years. I am tired of men 
who are worthless and decayed to the core, like 
blighted peaches. I am tired of seeing such 
men in power. I am tired of being obliged to 
smile where I long to smite. I am tired of vul- 
garity which glides forever through the world 
like the snake through Eden. I am tired of wo- 
men who bear the hearts of tigers, and of men 
who roar like lions, yet show the valor of mice. 
I am tired of living shoulder to shoulder with 
my pet antipathies. I am tired of the everlast- 
ing inveighing against capital, when any idiot 
knows that capital is the king-bolt that holds 
the world together. I am tired of wearing shab- 
by clothes, and meeting folks who judge of a 
parcel by the quality of wrapping paper it is in- 
cased in. I am tired of being well-behaved and 
decorous when I want to fling stones and make 
faces. I am tired of smelling the game dinner 
of my neighbor and sitting down at home to 
beans and bacon. I am tired of many more 
things, the enumeration of which would take 
from now until the day after forever. 



XVI. 

Do you know, my dear, that there is absolutely 
nothing tliat will help you to bear the ills of 
life so well as a good laugh. Laugh all you can, 
and the small imps in blue who love to preempt 
their quarters in a human heart will scatter away 
like owls before the music of flutes. There are 
few of the minor difficulties and annoyances that 
will not dissipate at the charge of the nonsense 
brigade. If the clothes line breaks, if the cat 
tips over the milk and the dog elopes with the 
roast, if the children fall into the mud simulta- 
neously with the advent of clean aprons, if the 
new girl quits in the middle of housecleaning, 
and though you search the earth with candles 
you find none to take her place, if the neighbor 
in whom you have trusted goes back on you and 
decides to keep chickens, if the chariot wheels 
of the uninvited guest draw near when you are 
out of provender, and the gaping of your empty 
41 



42 A STRING OF BEADS 

purse Is like the unfilled mouth of a young robin, 
take courage if you have enough sunshine in 
your heart, to keep a laugh on your lips. Before 
good nature, half the cares of daily living will 
fly awa}^ like midges before the wind; try it. 



XVII. 

The other evening it chanced that a combina- 
tion of disastrous circumstances wrought havoc 
with my temper. I lost my train; my head 
hummed like a° bumblebee with weary pain, and 
the elastic that held my hat to its moorings 
broke, so that that capering compromise between 
inanimate matter and demoniac possession blew 
half a block up street on its own account, and 
was brought back to me by a youthful son of 
Belial, who took my very last quarter as reward 
for the lively chase. 

"There's no use!" said I to myself as I jogged 
along through the gloaming; "blessed be the 
woman who knows enough to cry 'hold!' against 
such odds!" 

And just then I spied a wizened little mite of a 
woman trotting by, carrying a gripsack bigger 
than herself. She grasped it, and held it against 
her wan little stomach, as a Roman warrior 

43 



44 A STRING OF BEADS 

might carry his shield into battle — plucky to the 
last. 

"Now," said I, "look here, Amber; have you 
a fifty pound sachel to tug through the darkness? 
No! Then you might be worse off." 

And I went on a little farther and I met the 
brave fireman going home drenched and worn 
from the big fire. "You coward!" said I to my- 
self, "what if you were a fireman! Something 
to growl about then, I guess." 

And I went a bit farther and I saw a little 
white coffin in a window. "How about that?" 
said I. "If the darlings were gone to their long 
home you might talk about trouble!" 

And a few moments later I ran across an old 
man without any legs, peddling papers. And then 
I said: "Do you call your life a grind, madam, 
with two legs to walk upon, and a sufficient in- 
come to admit of an occasional fling? What if 
you had wooden legs, and peddled papers?" 

Now, I have told you this for a purpose. How- 
ever dark your lot may be there are worse all 
around you. You may be inclined to think that 
the bloom and the brightness have gone out 
of your life, leaving nothing behind them but 



.A STRING OF BEADS 45 

what remains of the carnation when the frost 
finds it — a withered stalk. But if you will take 
the trouble to watch, you will find that there is 
always something harder to bear than your own 
trouble, and, put to the test, you wouldn't change 
crosses with your neighbor. 



XVIIL 

What if a man went over the lake to St. 
Joe to visit the peach orchards at the ma- 
turity of their delicious harvest! The consent 
of the owner of the fairest plantation of the 
many has been gained, let us imagine, for the 
plucking of the perfect fruit. And yet, in despite 
of opportunity and privilege, what would you 
think of one who came home with empty baskets 
and an unappeased relish for ripe peaches? 
Would you not think such a one a dullard, or, at 
least, stupidly blind to his opportunities? And 
if you chanced to hear him crying over his empty 
basket later on, would you not revile him for a 
lazy fellow? We all of us, from day to day, miss 
chances of far greater value than the ripest peach 
that ever mellowed in the sun. The opportunity 
to say a kind and encouraging word swings low 
upon the bough of to-day. Why not gather it 
in? The chance to help, to succor, to protect; 

46 



A STRING OF BEADS r, 

the chance to lend a helping hand, to share a 
burden, to soothe a sorrow, to plant a loving 
thought, or twine a memory that shall blossom 
like a rose upon the terrace of to-morrow, all 
are our own as we pass through the world on our 
way to heaven. We may not come this way 
again. See to it. then, that we carry full bas- 
kets on the homeward faring. 



XIX. 

Not long ago there slowly ascended into the 
evening sky a pillar of cloud so vast that all 
measurements sank into insignificance beside it. 
Its color was of softest gray just touched with 
the flush that deepens the inmost chamber of a 
shell, or blushes in the unfolded petals of a 
wind flower. With majestic yet almost impercep- 
tible motion this cloud mounted the blue back- 
ground of the sky. The spectre of a faded moon 
hung motionless above it an instant only, and 
then was swiftly drawn within its soft eclipse. 
Changing from moment to moment, the great 
mass took on all semblances of vivid fan- 
cy, until the evening sky seemed the arena 
of dreamland's cohorts. With indescribable 
grace and with the delicate lightness of a fairy 
footfall the mighty visitant advanced and took 
possession of the heavenly field. Suddenly the 
full glory of the setting sun smote it from outer 
48 



A STRING OF BEADS 49 

rim to base. In less time than it takes to tell 
the story the cloud was dissipated in a spray of 
feathery light. It drifted like a wreath before 
the wind and lost itself in the illimitable spaces 
of the air, as dust in the splendor of a summer 
day. It broke upon the hills in a shower of 
flame and dissolved above the still waters of the 
lake in tremulous flakes of light. The sight was 
worth going far to see, and yet I am willing to 
wager my to-morrow's dinner that not one-fiftieth 
of the folks for whom I write, saw it, or would 
have left their supper to watch the glorious spec- 
tacle. 



XX. 



There is just one thing nowadays that never 
fails to bring success, and that is assurance. If 
you are going to make yourself known, it is no 
longer the thing to quietly hand out your card 
and a modest credential; you must advance with 
a trumpet and blow a brazen blast to shake the 
stars. The time has gone by when self-advance- 
ment can be gained by modest and unassuming 
methods. To stand with lifted hat and solicit 
a hearing savors of an all too humble spirit. The 
easily abashed may starve in a garret, or go die 
on the highways. There is no chance for them 
in the jostle of life. The gilded circus chariot, 
with a full brass band and a plump goddess dis- 
tributing posters, is what takes che popular heart 
by storm. Your silent entry into town, depend- 
ing upon the merits of your wares to work up a 
trade, is chimerical and obsolete. We no longer 
sit in the shadow and play flutes ; we parade in 
50 



A STRING OF BEADS 51 

a sawdust ring and play on trombones, or take 
our place on a raised platform and beat the 
bass drum, and in that way we draw a crowd 
and gather in the coppers, and that is what we 
live for, isn't it? 



XXI. 

There should be a new beatitude, and it should 
read, "Blessed is the man who hath the courage 
of his convictions." It should apply to poor, 
long-suffering women as well. We have plenty 
of the sort of courage that will lead a man to 
step in front of a runaway horse, or dash into a 
burning house, or throw himself off a dock to 
rescue a perishing wretch, but there is a dearth 
of the kind of bravery that will enable either 
man or woman to face a laugh in defense of 
a principle, or succor a losing cause despite 
a sneer. How the best of us will retreat trail- 
ing our banner in the dust, when the hot shot 
of ridicule confronts us from the enemy's camp, 
or when some merry sentinel challenges us with 
the opprobrious epithet, "crank." Why, I be- 
lieve there is hardly a man or woman to-day who 
would have the courage to march up to a half- 
grown boy and knock the cigarette out of his 

52 



A STRING OF BEADS 5^ 

mouth, or tackle the omnipresent, from ever- 
lasting to everlasting expectorator and buffet 
him into decency, or drive the "nose-bag" and 
the "head-check" fiend at the point of an um- 
brella from all future molestation of the noble 
horse he persecutes! We all believe in the ex- 
termination of public nuisances, but we have not 
the courage of our convictions to enable us to 
fight the fight of the just to overthrow the ram- 
pancy of the evil doer. 



XXII. 

Like the presence of a fresh clover in a mead- 
ow of sun- scorched grasses, or the sound of a 
singing lark in a council of crows, is the sight of 
a bashful child. In this age of juvenile precocity 
and pinafore wisdom I would rather run across 
a downright timid boy or girl than drink Arctic 
soda in dog days. Never be distressed, then, 
when "Johnnie" hangs his head and blushes like 
a girl, or when his little sister stands on one 
foot and farly writhes with embarrassment in the 
presence of strangers. Count it rather the very 
crown of joy that you are the parent of a fresh 
and innocent child, rather than the superfluous 
attendant of a blas^ infant, who discounts a 
circus herald in "cheek" and outdistances a 
drummer in politic address and unabashed 
effrontery. If I had my way I would put 
half the little mannikins and pattern dolls of 
our latter day nurseries into a big corn-popper 
54 



A STRING OF BEADS 55 

and see if I couldn't evolve something sweeter 
and more wholesome out of the hard, round, 
compact little kernels of their present individ- 
uality. I would utterly do away with children's 
parties and "butterfly bails" and kirmess dissipa- 
tions. There should be a new deal of bread and 
milk all around. Every boy in the land should 
go to bed at sundown, and every girl should 
wear a sunbonnet. There should be no carrying 
of canes, or eating of candy, or wearing of jewel- 
ry, or talking of beaux, and I would dig up from 
the grave of the long ago the quaint old custom 
of courtesying to strangers, of keeping silent 
until spoken to, and of universal respect for the 
aged. This world would brighten up like a rose 
garden after a shower with the presence of so 
many modest little girls and bashful boys of the 
good old-fashioned sort. 



XXIII. 

I went to the Auditorium the other night to 
hear somebody play on the violin. But that was 
not a violin which the slender, dark eyed per- 
former used, and the music that so charmed me 
was not drawn from strings and flashed forth by 
any ordinary bow. The heavenly notes to which 
I listened were like those that young leaves give 
forth when May winds find them, or that ripples 
make, drawn softly over pebbly beaches. And 
when they died away and floated like a whisper 
through the hushed house, it was no longer mu- 
sic; it was a great golden-jacketed bee settling 
sleepily into the heart of a rose; it was the 
chime of a vesper-bell broken in mellow cadences 
between vine-clad hills; it was a something that 
had no form nor shape, nor semblance to any 
earthly thing, yet floated midway between the 
earth and sky, light as the frailest flower of 
snow the north wind ever cradled, substanceless 
as smoke or wind-followed mist. 
56 



XXIV. 

I overheard the following conversation the 
other day in a popular refrectory: 

"Do your children mind you?" 

"I guess not; they never pay any more atten- 
tion to me than if I was a dummy. It takes 
therr father to bring them to terms every time!" 

"I am so glad to hear it. I like to know that 
somebody else besides me has a hard time with 
their children. I declare the only way I can 
get baby to mind already is to jab him with a 
hat-pin!" 

I waited to hear no more. With sad precipi- 
tation I gathered up my check and fled. Had I 
waited another minute I should have said to that 
mother: "Madam, I will give you a problem to 
solve. If, at the age of three, a child needs the 
impetus of one hat-pin to make him obey, how 
many meat-axes will it require to keep him in 
order at the age of ten? And if yon are such a 

57 



58 A STRING OF BEADS 

poor miserable failure as a mother and a woman 
now, just at the commencement of an immortal 
destiny, what have the eternities in store for 
you?" 

Why, oh, why are children sent to people 
who have no more idea about bringing them up 
than a trout has about training hop-vines? It 
is a question that has given and does give me 
much uneasiness. 



XXV. 

You imagine it is not polite to be plain 
spoken! My dear, there are times when to be 
merely "polite" is to be a toady! There 
are times when politeness is a pillow of hen 
feathers, wherewith to smother honor and strangle 
truth. If all you care for is to be popular, to go 
through life like a molasses-drop in a child's 
mouth, why, then, choose your way and live up 
to it, but don't expect to rank higher than mo- 
lasses, and cheap molasses at that. For my part 
I would rather be outspoken in the cause of 
right, even if plain speech did offend, than be 
a coward and a woolly mouth. Somebody once 
lived upon earth, the example of whose thirty odd 
years of mortal environment we are taught to 
pattern our own lives close upon. How about 
his politeness when he talked with the hypocrites 
and rebuked the pharisees? How about his pol- 
icy when he drove the money-changers before a 

59 



60 A STRING OF BEADS 

stinging whip, and championed the cause of the 
sinful woman? Oh! I tell you, the soul that is 
always looking out for the chance to score one 
for the winning cause, and throw up its hat with 
the crowd that makes the most noise, is poor 
stock to invest in. In the time of need such a 
friend would turn out worse than a real estate 
investment in a Calumet swamp. 



XXVI. 

Shall I tell you plainly, and without any minc- 
ing, what type of woman I think the most dan 
gerous? It is not the virago, the wounds of a 
sharp tongue are hard enough to bear, but there 
is a balm for them. Mother may be overworked, 
or sister may be fretted; something is the matter 
with the digestion, often, when the one we love 
scolds and is excessively disagreeable in manner 
and speech. The harshest word is soon excused 
and overlooked by the smile and the caress that 
are sure to follow. So, bad as a scolding, nag- 
ging tongue may be, it has its alleviations, and 
somewhere there is an excuse made to fit it. 
But what palliation is there for the offense of 
the woman who seeks by blandishments and ar- 
tifices of the evil one's own concoction to steal 
the affection of a man away from his wife? There 
are more such people in the world than you can 
61 



62 A STRING OF BEADS 

imagine (and the evil is not confined to the one 
sex either.) An intriguing woman (or man) who 
steals into a happy home and seeks to undermine 
it, deserves to be stoned on the highway. She 
may steal 5'our purse, your diamonds, or your 
checkbook, and, while love reigns on its rightful 
throne, the home will be happy; but let her 
seek to discrown love, and entertain a clandestine 
passion in its place, and the foundation of the 
stoutest home that was ever founded on the rocks 
of time will tumble in ruin about her ears. 
Avoid the intriguing, fascinating, dangerous, 
designing woman, then, who recognizes no sanc- 
tity in wedded honor, and by her wiles and 
witcheries lets in a thousand devils to the heart 
and home she curses with her presence. 



XXVII. 

I chanced to stand the other day in a stuffy 
little room, the only window of which was shaded 
by a ground glass light. Before the gray void 
of this cheerless window a few flies darted hither 
and thither in consequential flurry, while I my- 
self, for the time being a most blue and down- 
cast mortal, was battling with the thought that 
life, after all, was hardly worth the living, and 
the outlook for anything better in a dim and un- 
certain future, too dubious to be entertained. 
But all at once my vision seemed to pierce the 
shaded pane that intervened between me and the 
great, rushing, riotous world, and such a con- 
ception of all that lay the other side the ground 
glass window overflowed my soul, that I felt re- 
buked as by an audible voice. 

"You and the flies that bunt their uncomprehend- 
ing heads against the closed window are exactly 
alike!" something seemed to say, "Because you 
63 



64 A STRING OF BEADS 

cannot see what lies outside the limits of this 
unlovely place, you are ready to believe that this 
little span, this vi^retched inclosure between grimy 
walls and behind a darkened outlook, is all there 
is of life. The flies are excusable, but you are 
beneath the plummet of contempt. You know 
j^ou are confined here but for a moment, and 
that beyond that pane of opaque light lies a 
universe so vast that only divine thought can 
compass it; you know that uncounted millions 
of worlds are flashing through limitless space, 
and that the sweep of unhindered and unob- 
structed life is grand and full and free, and yet 
you are plunged in doubt, because there chances 
to be a shade of ground glass between your soul 
and God! When the strong touch of death has 
shattered that paltry obstruction, how ashamed 
you will be of all your doubt and unfaith. " 



XXVIII. 

There is a type of humanity we all encounter 
from day to day, at whose funeral I shall carry a 
banner and beat a tom-tom. He is the man who 
knows it all. In his grave, human forethought, 
and general knowledge, and mortal perfection and 
everything worth knowing, shall one day lie down 
and die. He never makes mistakes, nor loses 
his temper, nor gets the worst of an argument, 
nor is worsted in a bargain. He never acts on 
impulse, nor jumps without looking, nor com- 
mits himself rashly, nor loses the wind out of his 
sails. He is so overv/helmingly superior (some- 
times he is a woman!) that in his presence you 
are a child of wrath, a hopeless imbecile, and 
a black sheep all in one, and yet — how you hate 
him and how you long to see some brave young 
David come along and hit him with a sling 
shot! Such a man as he, is fitted to bring the 
average human to the dust as quickly and 
as surely as a well aimed bullet brings down a 

wild duck. 

65 



XXIX. 

What a superior chance a man has in this 
world over a woman! In the matter of physical 
attributes alone his innings are as far ahead of 
hers as the man who carries the banner in a 
fourth of July procession is ahead of the little 
boy who tugs along behind with the lemonade 
pail. The other evening I attended the theatre, 
and casting my eye over the audience between 
acts, I beheld no less than a score of bald-headed 
men. They were composed, and even cheerful, 
under an infliction that would have ostracized 
a woman. Imagine a man taking a bald-headed 
woman to see the "Railroad of Love!" Imagine 
a bald-headed girl with a fat, red neck and white 
eyelashes being in eager demand for parties, 
coaching jubilees or private suppers. There 
never was a man so homely, so halt, so deficient 
in beauty or brain that he could not get a wife 
when he wanted, but the candidates for the po- 
66 



A STRING OF BEADS 6? 

sition of mistress of any man's household must 
be pretty, graceful and sweet. The chances are 
uneven, my dear, but what are you going to d<5 
about it? 



XXX. 

There is not much credit in being jolly when 
the joints of life are well oiled and events move 
as smoothly as feathers drawn through cream. 
The glory lies in maintaining your serenity under 
adverse circumstances; in emulating Mark Tap- 
ley, and being jolly when there is not a hand's 
breadth of blue in all the heavens. There are 
straws laid upon us every day, which, if they do 
not break our backs, at least go far to loosen the 
vertebrae of our temper. One of these straws 
is the man who expectorates in public places. 
What shall I do with that man? I cannot kill 
him, because there is a law against the violent 
removal of even a human straw. To be sure, 
he is the most insignificant straw that the wind 
of destiny blows across the waste of life. He 
never will mature a head of wheat though you 
give him eleven eternities to do it in. But he 
serves his purpose, and breaks the back of tolera- 
tion. 

6S 



XXXI. 

On the opposite corner sits a half-grown girl 
peddling apples. She polishes the fruit occa- 
sionally with a rag that she carries about her 
person (let us humbly hope it is not her hand- 
kerchief!) and now and then breaks into a double 
shuffle to dissipate the chill that invades her ill- 
clothed frame. What taste of joy do you sup- 
pose that child ever got out of the pewter cup 
the fates pour for her? Does she ever find time 
to run about with other children, playing the 
games which the generations hand down from 
one to the other? Does she ever play "tag," or 
"gray wolf," or "I spy?" Does she ever swing 
in a hammock like other girls when the days are 
long and blithe and sweet, as free from care as 
a cloud or a butterfly? Does life hold for her 
one sparkle in its poor cup of wine, one flavor 
that is not sordid and low and mean? You say 
it is easy to sit here all day selling apples, 
69 



70 A STRING OF BEADS 

and wonder why I hold this sallow-faced girl up 
for special pity. To be sure there is no hardship 
in the part of her life visible to us. But in her 
dull soul lurks constantly the shadow of an ever 
present fear. The poor child is accountable to 
a cruel master, whether father or mother it mat- 
ters little, who beats her each night that she 
returns to her wretched home with a scanty 
showing of nickels; and the consciousness of 
dull times and slow sales keeps her in a 
state of trepidation, which in you or me, my 
dear, would soon lapse into "nervous pros- 
tration," a big doctor's fee, and a change of 
air. Yet mark my words, if the dark-browed 
liberator of sorrow's captives were to proffer my 
little fruit peddler the exchange of death for all 
this wearing apprehension and constant toil, do 
you think she would accept the transfer? Not 
she. The "captain" out snow-balling to-day in 
her love-guarded home, with never a fear to shadow 
her sunny eyes, nor a big sorrow to start the 
showery tears, would not plead harder for the 
boon of longer living. 



XXXII. 

As I sit here by my window I am reminded 
that this is a queer world and queer be the mor- 
tals that pass through it. There is that wreck 
of a man over yonder squeezing a bit of weird 
melody out of an old accordion and expecting 
the tortured public to throw a penny into his hat 
now and then to pay him for his trouble. Do 
you suppose that man knows what happiness 
means, as God designed it. He was, without 
doubt, a sad and grimy little baby once, brought 
up on gin slightly adulterated with his mother's 
milk. He was pounded daily before he was two 
years old, starved and cuffed and kicked all the 
way up to manhood, and now his neck is so com- 
pletely under the heel of hydra-headed disaster, 
wickedness and want, that all he can find to do 
in this big and busy world is to sit on the side- 
walk and lacerate the public ear with those dread- 
ful discords. And yet, if death were to step up 
71 



72 A STRING OF BEADS 

to that beggar's side and offer him release, in- 
stant and sure, in the form of a falling brick or 
a horse running amuck on the crowded sidewalk, 
he would cling to the miserable shred he calls 
life as eagerly as though he were the crown 
prince himself, with the heritage of his kingdom 
yet unwon. 



XXXIII. 

If you go to a florist and ask for a sweet pink 
root, you may get fooled on the label, but when 
blooming time comes round there will be no 
difficulty in deciding whether the flower you took 
on trust was pink or onion. Plant a seed in the 
horticultural kingdom by any name you please, 
there will be no mistake possible when June 
comes. A carrot is bound to yield carrots, 
and a rose will repeat the bright wonder of its 
beauty throughout the dreamy summer days, in 
spite of any other name the florist may have 
blundered upon in the labeling. Not so with 
humanity. There are souls that pass through 
life with the label of lily, balm or heart's-ease 
tagged to them, when they are nothing better than 
wild onion at heart. There are lives sown in 
out of the way places, and carelessly passed by 
as weeds, whose blossom angels might stoop to 
wear in the whiteness of their own pure breasts. 
73 



74 A STRING OF BEADS 

Oh, to rid the world of its shams! To sweep 
away the "Chad bands" with a feather duster, as 
the new girl removes dust; to open the windows 
and shoo away the traitors as one drives flies; 
to hoe out society plats as one hoes garden beds, 
and thin out the flaunting weeds so that the 
lilies may find room to grow; to turn the strong 
light of discerning truth upon hypocrites until, 
as the microscope changes a globule of dew into 
the abode of 10,000 wriggling abominations, so 
the deceitful heart shall stand revealed for what 
it actually is, rather than for what it seems to 
be. 



XXXIV. 

I am tired of the endless dress parade of 
the "Great Alike." 1 am weary of walking in 
line, like convicts in stripes. I glory in cranks 
who serve their own individuality and are in 
bondage to nobody. The onward sweep of prog- 
ress in this age has opened up the way for non- 
conformists. It is not a matter of heresy, now- 
adays, to think for yourself, dress for yourself, 
and be yourself. I confess that I have no heart 
pinings for such nonconformists as Dr. Mary 
Walker or any other individual who believes that 
eccentricity, serving no purpose but to make one 
conspicuous, is interesting. There are certain 
general rules of conduct that must be observed 
or the world would go to wreck like a wild freight 
train. It would be embarrassing to all concerned 
were I to decline to conform to the conventional 
custom of wearing shoes and bonnets, but when 
fashion ordains French heels and dead birds, if 
75 



76 A STRING Of BEADS 

I decline to walk in file with the conformist, I 
am something of a hero, perhaps, and certainly 
preserve my own self-respect better than if I 
yielded to either a harmful or a cruel custom. 
When etiquette rules that I go through the 
world armed with a haughty reserve, like a picket 
soldier with a shotgun, if I conform to that rule, 
I act upon the warm impulses of natural living 
as the refrigerator acts upon meat; I may pre- 
serve the proprieties, but I chill the juices. 



XXXV. 

1 wish I could spend a fortnight in a world 
where folks dared to be true to themselves; where 
the conformist was shelved with last year's cal- 
endars, and a man studied out his own route to 
heaven and had the courage to walk in it. I 
would like to dwell with individuals and not 
with packs of human cards shuffled together in 
sets. I would like to feel my soul kindle into 
respect for distinct personalities, each one mak- 
ing his garment after his own measurement, 
and not trying to fit his coat after the cut of 
his neighbor's jacket. I would like to live 
for a while with men and women, rather than 
with human sheep blindly following a leader. 
Life is something better than a sheep-path aim- 
lessly skirting the hills. It is a growth upward 
through the infinite blue into heaven. It is the 
spreading of many and various branches. If you 
are a willow, don't attempt to be a pine, and if 
77 



78 A STRING OF BEADS 

the Lord made you to grow like an elm don't 
pattern yourself after a scrub oak. The rebuke 
"what will people say?" should never be applied 
to the waywardness of a child. Teach it rather 
to ask: "How will my own self-respect stand this 
test?" Such training will evolve something rarer 
in the way of development than a candle-mold 
or a yard-stick. 



XXXVI. 

How full the streets are, to be sure! Where 
do all the folks come from and where do they 
stop? Surely there are not roofs enough to cover 
the steady stream of humanity that courses 
through the thoroughfares from dawn to night 
time. To one who walks much to and fro in the 
town there comes a rare chance to study human 
types. Books hold nothing within their covers 
so grotesque and so pathetic, so inexplicable and 
so queer as the folks that jostle one another on 
the streets ! There is the precise female who nips 
along in a little apologetic way, as though there 
was an impropriety in the very act of locomo- 
tion for which she would fain atone. From 
the crown of her head to her boot tips she is 
proper, stupid and decorous, but too much of 
her company would prove to endurance what 
sultry weather proves to cream. In fact, I think 
if I were told I had to live with some of the 



80 A STRING OF J>EADS 

women I meet on the streets, I would fall on 
my hat pin, as the old Romans did upon their 
swords, as the pleasanter alternative. There is 
nothing more charming than a bright woman, 
but she must be superior to her own environ- 
ments and be able to talk and think about other 
things than a correct code of etiquette, her cos- 
tumes and her domestic concerns. 

There is a man I sometimes encounter on the 
street between whom and myself there looms a 
day of bitter reckoning. He wears rubbers if the 
day is at all moist, and next to ear muffs, galoshes 
on an able bodied man goad me to fury. If the 
Lord made you a man, be a man and not a molly- 
coddle. Soup without meat, bread without salt, 
pie-crust without a filling, slack-baked dough, 
all these are prototypes of the man without en- 
durance or sufficient stamina to stand getting his 
delicate feet dashed with dew, or his shell-like 
ears nipped by frost. 



XXXVII. 

Country living is delightful, but, like all other 
blessings, it has its alternates of shadow. I 
used to sit here by my window last April 
and gloat over the prospects for the vegetable 
garden a tramp laid out and seeded for me in 
the early spring. What luscious peas were go- 
ing to clamber over the trellis along about the 
middle of July! What golden squashes were going 
to nestle in the little hollows! What lusty corn 
was going to stride the hillocks! What colonies 
of beans and beds of lettuce should fill the 
spaces, like stars in the wake of a triumphant 
moon, and how odorous the breath of the health- 
ful onion should be upon the midsummer air! 
But listen. No Assyrian ever yet came down 
upon the fold as my neighbor's chickens have 
descended upon the fair territory of my garden. 
As for shooing a chicken off, my dear, when 
its gigantic intellect is set upon scratching up 

81 



82 A STRING OF BEADS 

a seeded bed, you might as well attempt to wave 
back a thunderstorm with a fan. 

I have undertaken several difficult things in 
my life, but never one so hopeless as convincing 
a calm and resolute hen that she is an intruder. 
I spent one glad summer trying to keep a brood 
out of a geranium bed, and had typhoid fever 
all the fall just from overwork and worry. But 
say there had been no chickens to "wear the 
heart and waste the body," how about potato 
bugs, and caterpillars and huge and gruesome 
slugs? I never go out to sprinkle the sad pea 
vines or pick the drooping lettuce but what I 
resolve myself into a magnet to lure the early 
vegetable-devouring reptile from its lair. Large 
7 by 9 caterpillars and zebra-striped ladybugs 
disport themselves on neck and ankle until I flee 
the scene. 



XXXVIII. 

If there is anything worse than a blue ja}^ 
name it. Perhaps a mannish woman, with a 
shriJl voice and a waspish tongue, is as bad, but 
she can't be worse. There are something less 
than a hundred of these feathered hornets dwell- 
ing in the grove that surrounds my house, and 
they begin before sunrise to call names and fight 
clamorous battles. One of them starts the row 
by crying something in the ear of a neighbor, 
which sounds like a challenge blown through a 
fish horn. At this the insulted neighbor flops 
down off the tree where he lives, and says naughty 
words very thick and very fast. Then five or six 
old ladies poke their heads over the sides of their 
nests and call "Police!" A squad of bluecoats 
comes tearing over the border and attacks the 
original culprit. He whips out his fish horn and 
summons a general uprisings Very soon there 
is a battle royal, to which the old ladies add 
83 



84 A STRING OF BEADS 

zest by squeaking out dire threats in shrill fal- 
setto voices pitched at high "C. " This keeps 
up until somebody arises and declaims from my 
open window, dancing meanwhile in helpless 
rage, to see how futile is the voice of august 
man when blue-jays hold the floor. Talk about 
the English sparrow ! It is a mild-mannered 
little gentleman compared to the noisy jay. 
Its politeness and amiability are Chesterfieldan 
beside the behavior of its handsomely attired 
but boorish neighbor. And as for fighting, why, 
- verily believe a bluejay in good condition could 
'do up" John L. Sullivan so quickly the gentle 
pugilist would never know what struck him. 



XXXIX. 

What roses are with worms in the bud, such 
are women without health. There can be no 
beauty in unwholesomeness ; there can be noth- 
ing attractive in a delicate pallor caused by the 
disregard of hygiene, or in a willowy figure, 
the result of lacing. If I could now and then 
thread some particular bead on an electric 
wire that should tingle and thrill wherever it 
touched, or v/rite in a streak of zigzag light 
across the sky, I might, perhaps, compel atten- 
tion to what I have to say. There are certain 
laws of health which^ if they only might be re- 
garded, would make us all as beautiful in out- 
ward seeming as we strive to be, no doubt, in 
spirit. Ever so pure and lovely a soul in an 
unhealthy body is like a bird trying to thrive 
and sing in an ill-kept cage, or a flower bloom- 
ing with a blight set deep within its withering 
petals. You or I can serve neither heaven nor 
85 



86 A STRING OF BEADS 

mankind worthily if we disregard the laws of 
health, and bear about with us a frail and poorly 
nurtured body. There are "shut in" spirits, to 
be sure, captives from birth to pain, the record 
of whose patient endurance of suffering sweetens 
the world in which they live, as a rose shut 
within a dull and prosy book imparts to its pages 
a fragrance born of summer and heaven; but 
such lives are the exception. The true destiny 
of the sons and daughters of earth is to grow 
within the garden of life as a sapling rather than 
as a sickly weed, developing timber rather than 
pith, and yielding finally to death, the sharp- 
axed old woodman, as the tree falls, to pass on- 
ward to new opportunities of power and service. 
The tree does not decay where it stands, nor does 
it often fall because its core is honeycombed by 
disease It is cut down in the meridian of its 
strength, because somewhere on distant seas a 
new ship is to be launched and needs a stalwart 
mainmast, or a home is to be builded that needs 
the fiber of strong and steadfast timber. So, I 
think, with men and women, there would not be 
so much unsightly growing old, with waning 
power and wasted faculties, if we attended more 



A STRING OF BEADS 87 

Strictly to the laws of health, and when death 
came to us at last it should only be because there 
was need of good timber further on. 



XL. 



I was watching not long since, a man talking 
to a bright woman on the train, and his manner 
of comporting himself set me to thinking of the 
peculiar ways men have of addressing themselves 
to women. Some talk to a woman very much as 
they might talk to the wonderful automaton 
around at the museum when it plays a game oi 
chess. "Why, bless my soul, it realty seems to 
be thinking! What apparent intelligence? What 
evident faculty of mental independence! It al- 
most appears to possess the power of coherent 
thought!" Others sit in the presence of a wo- 
man as though she was a dish of ice cream. 
"How sweet." "How refreshing." "How alto- 
gether nice!" Many behave in her company as 
though she was a loaded gun, and liable to do 
mischief, while a very few act as though she was 
above the wiles of flattery, and not to be bought 
for the price of a new bonnet. Hasten the day, 
88 



A STRING OF BEADS 89 

good Lord, when she shall be regarded as some- 
thing wiser and nobler than an automaton, less 
perishable than a confection, more comforting 
and peace-producing than a fire-arm, a veritable 
comrade for man at his best, not so much prized 
for the vain and evanescent charm of her beauty 
as for the steadfastness and the incorruptible 
purity of her soul. 



XLI. 

What would a man do, I wonder, if things 
went so irretrievably wrong with him as they 
do with some of us women? Why, take to drink, 
of course. That is a sovereign consolation I am 
told for many ills. A woman has no equivalent 
for whisky. She must needs clench her hands 
and set her teeth and bear her lot. And yet 
you tell us a man is the stronger. I tell you, 
my dear, I know a dozen women who could dis- 
count any soldier that ever fought in the Crimean 
wars, for downright heroism and pluck. Where 
do you find the man who is willing to wear 
shabby clothes and old boots and a seedy hat 
that his boys may go fine as fiddles? Where 
do you find a man who will get up cold mornings 
and make the fire, tramp to v/ork through snow, 
pick his way through flooding rain, weather 
northeast blasts and go hungry and cold that he 
may keep the children together which a bad and 
90 



A STRING OF BEADS 91 

wayward mother has deserted? First thing a man 
would do in such a case would be to board the 
children out with convenient relatives while he 
looked around for a divorce and another wife! 
How long would a man brace up under the serv- 
ant question? How long would he endure the 
insolence and the flings of cruel and covert ene- 
mies because the children needed all he could 
give them, and only along the thorny road of 
continual harassment and trial might he attain 
the earnings needed to render them happy and 
comfortable? If a man is insulted he settles the 
insult with a blow straight from the shoulder 
and that is the end of it; he would never be able 
to endure, as some women do, a never-ending 
round of persecution that would whiten the hairs 
on a sealskin jacket! 



XLII. 

There is one thing we sometimes see in the 
face of the young that is sadder than the ravages 
of any disease or the disfigurement of any de- 
formity. Shall I tell 3^ou what it is? It is the 
mark that an impure thought or an unclean jest 
leaves behind it. No serpent ever went gliding 
through the grass and left the trail of defilement 
more palpably in its wake than vulgarity marks 
the face. You may be ever so secret in your en- 
joyment of a shady story, you may hide ever so 
cunningly the fact that you carry something in 
your pocket w^hich you purpose to show only to 
a few and which will perhaps start the laugh 
that, like a bird of carrion, waits upon impurity 
and moral corruption for its choicest feeding, 
but the mark of what you tell, and what you do, 
and what you laugh at, is left behind like a sketch 
traced in indelible fluid. There is no beauty that 
can stand the disfigurement of such a scar. How- 

92 



A STRING OF BEADS 93 

ever bright your eyes, and rosy-red your color, 
and soft the contour of lip and cheek, when the 
relish of an impure jest creeps in, the comeliness 
fades and perishes, as lilies in the languor of a 
poisonous breath from off the marshes. I beg of 
you, dear girls, shun the companion who seeks 
to foul your soul with r.n obscene story or pic- 
ture, as 3'ou would shun the contagion of small- 
pox. If I had a daughter who went out into the 
world to earn her bread, as some of you do, and 
any one should seek to corrupt her purity by 
insidious advances, I would get down on my 
knees and pray God to take her to himself be- 
fore her fair, sweet innocence should sully under 
the breath of corruption and moral death. No- 
body ever went to the devil yet by one big bound, 
like a tiger out of a jungle or a trout to the fly; 
it is an imperceptible passage down an easy 
slope, and the first step of all is sometimes taken 
when a young girl lends her ears to a smutty 
story or a questionable jest. Then let me say 
again, and I wish I could borrow Fort Sheridan's 
bugle to blow it far and wide, that every girl 
might hear: Close your ears and harden your 
hearts against the insidious advance of evil. 



94 ' A STRING OF BEADS 

Have nothing to do with a desk-mate or with a 
comrade who seeks to amuse or entertain you 
with conversation you would not care to have 
"mother" hear, and which you would be sorry to 
remember, if this night the death angel came 
knocking at the door and summoned your soul 
away upon its lonely journey to find its God. 



XLIII. 

A bull-frog in a malarial pond is expected to 
croak and make ail the protest he can against 
his surroundings. But a man! Destined for a 
crown and sent upon earth to be educated for 
the court of the King of kings! Placed in an 
emerald world with a hither edge of opaline 
shadow and a fine spray of diamond-dust to set 
it sparkling; with ten million singing birds to 
form its orchestra ; sunset clouds and sunrise 
mists to drape it, and countless flowers to make 
it sweet v/hile the hand of God himself upholds 
it on its way among the clustering stars, what 
right has a man to find fault with his surround- 
ings, or lament himself that all things do not 
go to suit him here below? When it shall be 
in order for the glow-worm to call the midday 
sun to account; or for the wood-tick to find fault 
with the century old oak that protects it; or for 
the blue-bird to question the haze on a midsum- 

95 



96 A STRING OF BEADS 

mer horizon because, forsooth! it is a little off 
color with his own wings, then it will be time 
for man to find fault with the ordering of the 
seasons and the allotment of the weather in the 
world he is allowed to inhabit. 



XLIV. 

About one hour of the twenty-four would per- 
haps be the proportion of time a woman ought 
to spend upon her knees thanking God for a 
good husband. When I see the hosts of sorry 
maids, and women wearing draggled widow's 
weeds who fill the ranks of the great army of 
the self-supporting; when I see them trooping 
along in the rain, slipping along in the mud, 
leaping for turning bridges, and hanging on to 
the straps in horse cars, I feel like sending out 
a circular to sheltered and happy wives bidding 
them be thankful for their lot. To be sure, one 
would rather be a scrub-woman or a circus- 
jumper than be the wife of some men we wot of, 
but in the main, a woman well married is like a 
jewel well set, or like a light well sheltered from 
the wind. 



97 



XLV. 

What a grubby old stopping place this world 
is, anyway. How hard we have to work just to 
keep the flesh on our bones and that flesh cov- 
ered, even with nothing better than homespun. 
And we are getting a little tired of it all, aren't 
we, my dear? Just a little tired of the treadmill, 
where, like a sheep in a dairy, we pace our lim- 
ited beat to bring a handful of inadequate butter. 
We have trudged to and fro about long enough, 
and have half a mind to throw up the contract 
with fate. But hold on a bit. There is some- 
thing worse than too much work, and that is idle- 
ness. Imagine a sudden hush in all the myriad 
sounds of labor. The ceasing of the whirr of 
countless wheels whereat men stand day after 
day through toilful years, fashioning everything 
from a pin's head to a ship's mast; the suspended 
click of millions of sewing machines, above 
which bend delicate women stitching their lives 



A STRING OF BEADS 99 

into shirts and garments that find their way on- 
to bargain tables, where rich women crowd to 
seize the advantage of the discount. Let all 
suspended hammers in the myriad workshops 
swing into silence and all footsteps cease their 
weary plodding to and fro, I think the awful 
hush would far transcend the muteness of mid- 
night or that still hour when dawn steals in 
among the pallid stars, and on the dim, uncertain 
shore of time the tide of man's vitality ebbs faint 
and low. There is no blight so fell as the blight 
of enforced calm. It is in the unworked garden 
that weeds grow. It is in the stagnant water that 
disease germs waken to horrid life. Ennui palls 
upon a brave heart. Ennui is like a long-winded, 
amiable, but watery-idead friend who drops in to 
see us and dribbles platitudes until every nerve 
is tapped. Ennui is like being forced to drink 
tepid Vv^ater or to eat soup without salt. Labor, 
on the contrary, is like a friend with grit and 
tonic in his make-up. It comes to us as a wind 
visits the forest, and sets our faculties stirring 
as the wind rustles the leaves and sets the wood 
fragrance flying. It puts spice in our broth and 
ice in our drink. It puts a flavor in life that 



100 A STRING OF BEADS 

starts an appetite, or, in other words, awakens 
ambition. Although the world is full of toilers 
it would be worse off were it full of idlers. 
Good, hard workers find no time to make mis- 
chief. Your anarchists and your breeders of dis- 
cord are never found among busy men; they 
breed, like mosquitoes, out of stagnant places. 
It is the idle man that quickens hatred and con- 
tention, as it is the setting hen and not the scratch- 
ing one that hatches out the eggs. 



XLVI. 

It had been a battle renewed for more years 
than there are dandelions just now in the front 
yard. Various members of the family had de- 
clared from time to time that if the old house 
was not painted it would fall to pieces from 
sheer mortification at its own disreputable ap- 
pearance. 

"Why, you can put your toothpick right through 
the rotten shingles," cried the doctor. "The 
only way to save it is to paint it." 

Now, I have always been the odd sheep of a 
highly decorous fold. I have more love for nat- 
ure than hard good sense, I am told. So I 
loathe paint just as I hate 3urface manners. I 
want the true grain all the way through, be it in 
boards or people. I love the weather stain on 
an old house. I love the mossy touches, the 
lichen grays and the russet browns that age im- 
parts to the shingles, and I almost feel like mur- 
101 



102 A STRING OF BEADS 

dering the paint fiend when he comes around 
every spring and transforms some dear old land- 
mark into a gorgeous "Mrs. Skewton," with hid- 
eous coats and splashy trimmings. But alas for 
sentiment when the money bags are against it! 
Profit before poetry any day in this nineteenth 
century, my dear, and so when an interested cap- 
italist came up from town and gave it as his 
opinion that the old house would be worth a 
third more if put on the market in a terra cotta 
coat with sage-green trimmings the day was lost 
for me. I had to strike my colors like many 
another idealist in this practical world. In the 
first place, there has been for the last fifteen 
years or so, a vine growing all over the old home, 
catching its lithe tendrils into the roof and mak- 
ing cathedral lights in all the windows. It has 
been the home of generations of robins. It has 
hung full of purple, bell-shaped blossoms on 
coral stems that have attracted a thousand hum- 
ming birds and honey bees by their fragrance. 
It has changed into a veritable cloth of gold in 
early September, and in late October has flamed 
into scarlet against the gray roof, like a blaze 
that quivers athwart a stormy sky. It has been 



A STRING OF BEADS 103 

the joy of my life and the inspiration of my 
dreams, but it had to come down before the 
paint-pot! So one night when I reached home, 
tired to death with a hand-to-hand encounter 
with the demon who gives poor mortals their 
bread and butter for an equivalent of flesh and 
blood and spirit, I noticed that the little folks 
greeted me with an air of subdued decorum as 
though fresh from a funeral. There were no 
caperings, no flauntings, no cavortings. Each 
young minx had on her Sunday go-to-meeting 
air, and the boy stood with his hat on one side 
of his head, as though for a sixpence he would 
fight all creation. Wondering at the change, I 
happened to look toward the house, and there it 
stood in the light of the fading day, like a poor 
old woman without a veil to hide her wrinkles! 
Every window looked ashamed of itself, and on 
the ground lay the dear old vine, prone as a lost 
reputation. 

"I never see such an ill-fired crank in all the 
days of my life!" remarked the painter to the 
new girl, after I had held a brief but spirited in- 
terview with him over the garden fence; "blanket 
if she didn't cry because her vine was down!" 



XLVII. 

What is there within the home, during the 
winter season at least, that seems so thoroughly 
to constitute the soul of home as the family-room 
stove? It can never be replaced by that ugly 
hole in the floor which floods our rooms with 
furnace heat, with no glow of cheerful firelight, 
no flicker of flame or changeful play of shadow 
out of which to weave fantastic dreams and fan- 
cies. I once watched the dying out of one of 
these fires in a great base burner, around which 
for years a large and loving family had gathered. 
The furniture of the home had all been sold, and 
the family was about to scatter. The trunks were 
packed and gone, the last article removed from 
the place, and the old stove was left to burn out 
its fire at the last, that it, too, might be removed 
next morning. And after the evening had come 
and was far spent, the last evening wherein any 
right should remain to us to enter the old home 

104 



A STRING OF BEADS 105 

as its owners and occupants, I took my pass-key 
and slipped over from the neighbor' s for my 
final good-bye to the dear old home. The fire- 
light, like the glance of a reproachful eye, shone 
upon me through the gloom of the deserted par- 
lor. "Have I not warmed you and comforted 
you and cheered you with my genial glow?" a 
voice seemed to say; "and now you have come 
to see me die! I am the vital spirit of your home. 
I am dying, and nothing can ever reanimate 
these deserted rooms again with the dear, the 
beautiful past." 

Like the eye of one who is going down to 
death, the firelight faded and finally went out 
in the pallor of ashes, while I, sitting alone in 
the darkness, felt the whole v^/orld drearier for a 
little space for the final extinguishment of this 
fire, the death hour of a once happy home. 



XLVIII. 

Somebody asked me the other day if I favored 
divorce. Like everything else in the world, the 
matter depends largely upon special circum- 
stance, but in the main I do not believe in di- 
vorce. If husbands and wives cannot live to- 
gether without quarreling, let them live apart, 
but they have no business to sever the bond that 
unites them. The promise to take each other 
for "better or for worse" must be regarded in 
both readings of the clause. If the "worse" comes 
along we have no right to ignore it because the 
"better" has failed. If your husband is a drunk- 
ard, all the more reason for you to stand by him 
if you are a good woman. If he is cruel and 
abusive, you need not put your life in danger by 
staying under his roof, but you need not throw 
him over and get another husband. If he goes 
into the gutter, pull him out, and know that 
your experience is only a big dose of the "worse" 
106 



A STRING OF BEADS 107 

you promised to take along with the "better." 
It is the quinine with the honey, and you have 
no right to reject it. There are 10,000 things 
that work discord in married life that a little 
tact and forbearance would dissipate, as a steady 
wind will blow away gnats. The trouble with 
all of us is, we make too much of trifles. We 
nurse them, and feed them, and magnify them, 
until from gnats they grow to be buzzards with 
their beaks in our hearts. Not for one sin, nor 
seven sins, nor seventy sins, forsake the friend 
you chose from all the v/orld to make your own. 
A good woman will save anything but a liar, 
and God's grace is adequate, in time, for even 
him. I say unto wives, be large-hearted, wide 
in your charity, generous, not paltry, nor exact- 
ing, (exaction has murdered more loves than 
Herod murdered babies!) companionable, for- 
bearing and true, and stand by your husbands 
through everything. And I say unto men, be 
7;ie7i/ Don't choose a wife, in the first place, 
for the mere exterior of a pretty face and form. 
Be as alert in the choice of a wife as you are in 
a bargain. You don't invest in a house just be- 
cause it looks well, or buy a suit of clothes at 



108 A STRING OF BEADS 

first sight, or dash on change and snatch at the 
first deal. After you are once married stand by 
your choice like a man. If you must have your 
beer, don't sneak out of it on a clove and a lie; 
carefully weigh the cost, and if you conclude to 
risk everything for the gratification of an appetite 
drink at home and above board, and don't attempt 
to deceive your wife with subterfuges and ex- 
cuses. Don't run after other v/omen because your 
wife is not so young as she once was, or because 
the bloom is faded a little from the face you 
once thought so fair. It is the part of an Indian 
to retract a gift once given, or to go back on a 
bargain. Don't live together if you can't rise 
above the level of fighting cats, but be careful 
how you throw aside the bonds that God has 
joined between you. Live the lot you have 
chosen as bravely as you can, remembering that 
the thorn that you have developed will never 
charrge into a rose by mere change of circum- 
stances. Divorce and the mere shifting of the 
stage setting will never make your tragedy over 
into a vaudeville or a light opera. 



XLIX. 

The rainy season is here again, and where is 
dress-reform? My soul grew sick, the other morn- 
ing as, with unfurled umbrella, lunch-basket, 
bundle, and draperies, I beheld the working wo- 
man on her weary march. Give a man a petti- 
coat, a bundle and an umbrella, and the streets 
would be full of capering lunatics whenever it 
rained. Stay at home, did you say? That is 
good advice for the woman who has nothing else 
to do, but in these latter days the right sort of 
husband don't go round. Either he died in the 
war or the stock has run low, so that more than 
half the well-meaning women have no homes to 
stay in. What Moses is going to lead the 
poor creatures to the commonsense suit that 
shall protect them from the inclement weather 
they are forced to meet as they go abroad 
to earn their bread and salt? It must be a 
concerted movement, for there is none among 
109 



110 A STRING OF BEADS 

us who dares take the war path alone. The chil- 
dren of Israel went in a crowd and so must we. 
For a principle there are those among us who 
would die, perhaps, but there is no principle on 
the earth below nor in the heaven above for 
which we would suffer ridicule. As for me, I 
have furled my banner and laid aside my bugle. 
I am tired of being a martyr to an unpopular 
cause. I am too big a coward to be caught mak- 
ing an everlasting object of myself. I have gone 
back to flippity-floppity skirts and long gowns 
and all the rest of the "flesh pots." Browning 
says of a certain class of people : "The dread 
of shame has made them tame," and I am one 
of the tame ones. A domestic tabby couldn't be 
tamer, nor a yellow bird fed on lump sugar. I 
expect nothing but that my winter's hat will be 
adorned with a chubby green parrot, and that I 
shall walk the street leading a brimstone dog by 
a magenta ribbon. If one is forced to eat, drink 
and sleep with the Romans, perhaps it is better 
for one's peace of mind not to be too pronounced 
a Greek ! 



I shall meet the man who ties his horse's nose 
in a bag, some day, in single combat, and there 
will be only one of us left to tell the tale of the 
encounter. Wouldn't I love to see that man 
forced to take his dinner while tied up in a flour 
bag! I should love to deal out his coffee through 
a garden hose, and serve his vegetables through 
a long-distance telephone. There is nothing like 
turn about to incite justice in the human breast. 
While we are afflicted with such an epidemic 
of strikes, why not have one that has some sense 
in it. Let the overworked horses, straining them- 
selves blind with terrible loads, go on a strike. 
Let the persecuted dogs, deprived of water and 
scrimped for food, stoned and hounded as mad 
when they are only crazed by man's inhumanity, 
go on a strike. Let the cattle, and the countless 
thousands of stock, prodded into cars and 
cramped in long passages of transit, blinded with 
111 



112 A STRING OF BEADS 

the crash of fellow victims' horns while crowded 
together in their inadequate quarters, trampled 
under riotous hoofs, and kept without food and 
overfilled with water to make them look fat, go 
on a strike. Let the chickens and geese and 
all the live feathered stock on South Water 
Street, kept in little bits of coops and flung 
headlong and screaming down into dark cellars, 
trundled over rough roads in jolting wagons and 
utterly deprived for hours at a time of a drop of 
water to cool the fever of their terrible fear, go 
on a strike. Let the horses of these fat alder- 
men, left all day in the court house alleyway 
without food and checked tight with head-check 
lines, go on a strike. Let the patient nags that 
stand all day by the curbstone and are plagued 
and annoyed by mischievous boys, go on a 
strike. In such a strike as any of these the Lord 
himself might condescend to take sides with the 
oppressed against the oppressor. 



LI. 



There are many disagreeable things to be met 
with in life, but none that is much harder upon 
the nerves than a mannish woman. With a 
strident voice and a swaggering walk, and a clat- 
tering tongue, she takes her course through the 
world like a cat-bird through an orchard; the 
thrushes and the robins are driven right and left 
before the advance of the noisy nuisance. A 
coarse-tongued man is bad enough, heaven knows, 
but when a woman descends to slangy speech, 
and vulgar jests> and harsh diatribes, there is 
no language strong enough with which to de- 
nounce her. On the principle that a strawberry 
is quicker to spoil than a pumpkin, it takes less 
to render a woman obnoxious than to make a 
man unfit for decent company. I am no lover 
of butter-mouthed girls, of prudes and "prunes 
and prism" fine ladies; I love sprightliness and 
gay spirits and unconventionality, but the mo- 
113 



114 A STRING OF BEADS 

ment a woman steps over the border land that 
separates delicacy of feeling, womanliness and 
lovableness, from rudeness, loud voiced slang 
and the unblushing desire for notoriety, she be- 
comes, in the eyes of all whose opinion is worth 
having, a miserable caricature upon her sex. It 
is not quite so bad to see a young girl making a 
fool of herself as to see an elderly woman com- 
porting herself in a giddy manner in public places. 
We look for feather-heads among juveniles, but 
surely the cares and troubles of fifty years should 
tame down the high spirits of any woman. 
Chance took me into a public office the other 
day, largely conducted by women. Conspicuous 
among the clerks was a woman whose age must 
have exceeded fifty years. She was exchanging 
loud pleasantries with a couple of beardless boys 
upon the question of "getting tight." Noble 
theme for a woman old enough to be their grand- 
mother to choose! As I listened to the coarse 
jests and looked into her hard and unlovely face, 
I could but wonder how nature ever made the 
mistake to label such material — "woman." It 
would be no more of a surprise to find a confec- 
tioner's stock made up of coarse salt, marked 



A STRING OF BEADS 115 

"sugar/* or to buy burdock of a florist, merely 
because the tag attached to it was lettered "moss 
rose." 



LIL 



The only way to conquer a cast-iron destiny 
is to yield to it. You will break to pieces if you 
are always casting yourself upon the rocks. Sit 
down on the 'sorrowing stone" now and then, but 
don't expect to last long if you are constantly 
flinging yourself head first against it. If life 
holds nothing nobler and sweeter than the routine 
of uncongenial work, if all the pleasant anticipa- 
tions and lively hopes of youth remain but as 
cotton fabrics do when the colors have washed 
away, if good intention and noble purpose glim- 
mer only a little now and then from out the 
murky environments of your lot, as fisher lights 
at sea, accept the inevitable and make the best 
of it. Nothing can stop us if we are bound to 
grow. We are not like trees that can be hewed 
down by every chance woodman's axe; death is 
the only woodman abroad for us, and he does 
not hew down, he simply transplants. God is 
116 



A STRING OF BEADS 117 

our only judge; to him alone shall we yield the 
record of life's troubled day, and isn't it a great 
comfort to think that he so fully understands 
what have been our limitations, and how we have 
been handicapped and baffled and hindered? If 
jockeys v^^ere to enter their horses for the great 
Derby with the understanding that the road was 
rough and the horses blind, do you think much 
would be expected of the finish? And is heaven 
less discriminating than a horse jockey? 



LIIL 

Next to a steam calliope preserve me from a 
"smart" person. There is as much difference be- 
tween smartness and brain as there is between 
a jewsharp and a flute, or between mustard and 
wine. A "smart" person may turn off a lot of 
work and make things hum; so does a buzz 
saw ! Who would not rather spend an afternoon 
with a lark than with a hornet? The lark may 
not be so active, but activity is not always the 
most desirable thing in the world. A smart per- 
son may accomplish more than a dreamer, but 
in the long run I'll take my chance with the 
latter. When we go up to St. Peter's gate by 
and by, after life's long, blundering march is 
over, it will not be the answer to such questions 
as this: 'How many socks can you darn in an 
afternoon, besides baking bread, washing win- 
dows, tending babies and scrubbing floors?" that 
is going to help us; but, 'How many times have 
118 



A STRING OF BEADS 119 

you stopped your work to bind up a broken 
heart, or say a comforting word, or help carry 
a burden for somebody worse off than yourself?" 
I tell you, smart folks never have the time to be 
sympathetic; they always have too much thunder- 
ing work on hand. 



LIV. 

The other day a horse was trying to get a 
very small quantity of oats from the depths of 
a very small nosebag. In vain the poor fellow 
tossed his head and did his best to gain his 
dinner. At last, just as ue was settling down 
to dumb and despairing patience, a bright-faced 
boy of perhaps ten or twelve years of age hap. 
pened along. Seeing the dilemma of the horse, 
the little fellow stopped and said: "Halloa, can't 
get your oats, can you? Never mind, I'll fix 
you!" And straightway he shortened up the 
straps that held the bag in place, and, with a 
kindly pat and a cheery word which the grateful 
horse seemed to appreciate, went his way. 1 
would like to be the mother, or the aunt, or 
even the first cousin of that boy. I would rather 
that he should belong to me than that I should 
own a Paganini violin, or a first water diamond 
the size of a Concord grape. Bless his heart, 
120 



A STRING OF BEADS l2i 

wherever he is, and may he long continue to live 
in a world that needs him. Kindness of heart, 
and tenderness; consideration for the needs of 
the helpless and the weak, and the courage that 
dares be true to a merciful impulse, are traits 
that go far toward the make-up of angels. We 
need tender-hearted boys more than we need a 
new tariff to bring up and develop the resources 
of the country. The boy that succeeds in bring- 
ing in the greatest number of dead sparrows may 
be the embryo man of the future, and you may 
praise his energy and his smartness, but give 
me the boy who took the trouble to adjust the 
nose-bag every time. A little less business acu- 
men, a good bit less greed and cruelty, will tell 
on future character to the comfort of all con- 
cerned. 



LV. 



Policy in the hands of a diplomat is like a 
sharp sword in the grasp of an able fencer, but 
policy in the hands of fools is like a good knife 
wielded by a half-wit. It takes brains to be 
truly politic; the unfortunate person who at- 
tempts to be cautious, and wise, and reticent, 
and to let policy thread every action as a string 
runs through glass beads, only succeeds in mak- 
ing himself ridiculous. To be afraid to speak 
what is in your mind for fear you will make 
yourself unpopular, to be too cautious to men- 
tion the fact that you are having a new latch 
put on your front gate for fear that you might 
be over-communicative, to be backward in taking 
sides for fear of committing yourself to a losing 
cause, may be politic to your own feeble intelli- 
gence, but in the estimation of brainy folks it is 
a species of feline idiocy worse than fits. 



122 



LVI. 



All day long it has been trying to snow out 
here in the country. To me not even June, with 
its showering apple-tree flowers and its alterna- 
tions of silver rain and golden sunshine, is more 
beautiful than these soft winter days, full of 
snow-feathers and great shadows, I love to 
watch the young pines take on their holiday at- 
tire. How they robe themselves from head to 
foot in draperies of fleecy white, pin diamonds 
in their dark branches and wind about their 
slender girth the strands of evanescent pearl ! 
I love to watch the skies at dawn when they 
kindle like a flame above the bluffs and scat- 
ter sparkles of light as a red rose scatters its 
petals. Where has the last year fled? It seems 
but yesterday that I sat by this same window and 
watched the lilac plumes unfold on that old bush 
that to-day is getting ready to don its ermine. 
Why, at this rate, my dear, it won't be longer 

123 



124 A STRING OF BEADS 

than day after to morrow morning before you and 
I wake up and find ourselves old folks. How 
odd it will seem to look in the glass and see 
wisps of frosted stubble in place of the wavy 
locks of brown, and jet, and gold! Ah, well, it 
is a comfort to think that some folks defy time, 
and are as young at seventy as at seventeen. 
Beauty fades, and witchery takes unto itself 
wings, but true hearts, like wine, mellow and en- 
rich with years. 



LVII. 

I often sit for a half hour or more in the de- 
pot waiting-room, and for lack of anything else 
to do employ the time in watching the people 
who crowd through the swinging doors. Did 
you ever read the "Little Pilgrim?" Do you 
recall the chapter wherein the disembodied spir- 
its are represented as lingering near the gates 
to watch the coming in of newly liberated souls? 
Sometimes while sitting in one of the big rock- 
ing chairs I imagine to myself that the constantl}^ 
opening doors are the portals of death and I the 
lingering one who watches the throngs that are 
constantly exchanging earth for paradise. Along 
comes an old man with a shabby bundle; he 
cautiously opens the door and slips in like one 
who offers an excuse for his presence on the thither 
side. Presently he lays down his bundle and 
seats himself, a pilgrim whose wanderings and 
weariness are over. The brilliant lights, the 
126 



12G A STRING OF BEADS 

comfortable surroundings, the sound of pleasant 
voices all fill his heart with joy, and he settles 
himself back, thoroughly glad to be at rest. 
Next, a beautiful woman enters; her face is lined 
with care and her dark, bright eyes are full of 
trouble. She does not tarry, but hurries on like 
one seeking for something yet to come. A little 
child, with lingering, backward glance, flits 
through the swinging door as if loath to say 
good-bye to some one on the other side. A hard- 
featured man, whose sullen glance travels quickly 
about the place, comes next; he seems seeking 
for some one to welcome him, and is abashed to 
find himself alone among unheeding strangers. 
Next a bevy of laughing girls come in together, 
and the door, .swinging quickly behind them, 
discloses a band of young companions who ling- 
eringly turn away, content to knov/ the sheltered 
ones are safely gathered out of the darkness and 
the storm which they must still face. Some en- 
ter the door as though bewildered; some as 
though glad to find rest; some as though fright- 
ened at unknown harm, and some as though sus- 
picious of all that they beheld. Once I noticed 
a poor creature who came through the door cry- 



A STRING OF BEADS 127 

ing bitterly, but her tears were quickly dried by 
a waiting one who sprang forward and greeted 
her with a tender embrace. And at another time 
a baby came through in the arms of one who 
held it close so that it was not conscious of the 
transition. Sometimes I am glad to believe that 
death is no more than the swinging door which 
divides two apartments in a mighty mansion, 
and that our going through is no more than the 
exchange of a cold and unlighted hallway for a 
spacious living-room where all is light and 
warmth and blessed activity. 



LVIII. 

Eating milk toast with a spoon and stopping 
between each mouthful to swear! That was what 
I saw and heard a brawny man doing not long 
since in a popular down-town restaurant. The 
action and the manner of speech did not harmo- 
nize. If I felt it borne in upon me that I must 
be a profane fellow to prove my manliness, I 
would choose another diet than spoon victuals 
to nourish my formidable zest for naughtiness. 
Rare beef or wild game would be less incongru- 
ous. There are times when a man may be ex- 
cused for using objectionable language. Stress 
of righteous indignation, seasons of personal con- 
flict with hansom cabmen, large-headed street 
car conductors, ubiquitous, never-dying expec- 
torators and many other particular forms of tor- 
ment may make a man swear a bit now and 
then, but what shall we say of a bearded creat- 
ure with the dew ^j ^ ibabe's food upon his chin 

128 



A STRING OF BEADS 129 

who rends the placid air with unnecessary curs- 
ing? Sew up his lips with a surgeon's needle 
and throw him into the fool-killer's bag{ 



LIX. 

Boys, 5^ou know I like you and will stand a 
good deal of your swaggering ways. 1 like to 
see how fresh you are, and do not want to have 
you salted down too early by the processes of 
life. But one thing let me ask you. Don't wear 
silk hats before the down is fully apparent upon 
your chin. If there is an embarrassing sight left 
to one grown wan and worn in watching the 
foolishness of folly, it is the sight of a stripling 
in a plug hat. I would rather see a yearling 
colt hauling lumber, or a babe in arms scanning 
Homer. It is cruel; it is premature. Be a boy 
until you are fit to be a man, and hold to a boy's 
mode of dress at least until you are old enough 
to command the respect of sensible girls by some- 
thing more notable than cigarette smoking and 
athletic sports. 



130 



LX. 

I often hear people making a big fuss about 
little things. My path in life leads me among 
many "kickers" and many "growlers." Do you 
know what I would like to do with some of these 
malcontents and whiners? I would like to send 
them up for a week to watch life in the county 
hospital. I would like to seat them by a bedside 
where a noble woman lies dying all alone of a 
terrible disease. I would like to have them be- 
come acquainted with her bravery and the more 
than queenly calm with which she confronts her 
destiny. I would like to have them linger in the 
corridors and hear the moans from the wards and 
private rooms where the maimed and the crippled 
and the incurable are faintly struggling in the 
grasp of death. I would like to lead them 
through the children's ward, where mites of hu- 
manity cursed with heredity's blight, removed 
from a mother's bosom, consigned to suffering 

131 



132 A STRING OF BEADS 

throughout the span of their feeble days, lie 
faintly breathing their lives a.vjay. And then 
I would like to say to them: "You contemptible 
cowards, you abominable fussers, you inexcusa- 
ble kickers, see what the Lord might bring you 
to if he unloosed the leash and set real troubles 
on your track. Quit complaining and go to 
thanking heaven for all your unspeakable mer- 
cies!" 



LXI. 

Every morning just at 7 the entire neighbor- 
hood turns out to see them pass. She is a de- 
mure little lady with a face that makes one think 
of a blush rose, a little past its prime, but mighty 
sweet to look upon. She wears a mite of a white 
sun bonnet, clean as fresh fallen snow, and 
starched and stiff as the best pearl gloss can 
make it. The cape of this cute little bonnet 
shades a round white throat, and the strings are 
tied beneath the chin in a ravishing bow that 
stands guard over a dimple. She has been mar- 
ried quite ten years, and they say that the two 
little children who were cradled for a few happy 
months on her soft breast are waiting and watch- 
ing for her coming the other side of the river of 
death. He is a matter-of-fact looking man, with 
a resolute face and a constant smile in his eyes. 
He always carries a lunch-basket in one hand and 
with the other guides the steps of the faithful 
133 



134 A STRING OF BEADS 

little woman who accompanies him part way on 
the march of his daily grind. He works down- 
town in a big warehouse and he makes hardly 
enough money each week to keep you in cigars, 
my good friend, or your wife in novels. Though 
it rain, or though it shine, though the winds 
blow or the winds are low, whatever betide of 
chance, or change, or weather, there is not a 
morning that he goes to work that she does not 
walk with him as far as the corner, and in the 
face ot men and angels, grip car conductors and 
clerks, shop girls and grimacing urchins, kiss 
him good bye. She stands and watches until he 
is well on his way, then waves him a final fare- 
well, and trips back home in the serene shadow 
of her little bonnet Now you may ridicule that 
love and call it "spoony" and "silly," but, I tell 
you, a legacy of gold or a hatful of diamonds 
could not begin to outvalue such love in a man's 
home. God bless the two, say I, and roll round 
the joyful day when love and its free and beau- 
tiful demonstration shall shine athwart the here- 
sies of conventionality as April suns dispel the 
winter's fog with the splendor of their broadcast 
shining. 



LXII. 

I was riding up-town in a cable car not long 
ago late at night. The moon was at its full and 
all the ugliness of the city was shrouded, like a 
homely woman in a bridal veil of shimmering 
lace. We skimmed along on a smooth and un- 
obstructed track, like a sloop with every sail set, 
heading for the open sea. There were no idle 
chatterers aboard, and from the stalwart gripman 
at his post of duty, to the shrinking little girl 
passenger, who was half afraid and half delighted 
to be abroad so late alone, everybody and every- 
thing was in harmony with the hour and scene. 
Suddenly there fluttered into the car a snowy 
moth, astray from some flower garden in the 
country and quite bewildered and lost in the bar- 
ren city. The beautiful creature fluttered into a 
lady's face and she screamed and struggled as 
though attacked by a rabid beast. "Oh, kill it! 
kill the horrid thing," she cried, while her at- 
135 






136 A STRING OF BEADS 

tendant beat the air with his cane and sought to 
drive the dangerous interloper away. It rested 
for a moment upon the gripman's cap, where it 
looked like a feather dropped from a wandering 
bird. At last it settled upon the breast of a lit- 
tle child sleeping in its mother's arms. The 
mother brushed it away with her handkerchief 
as though its presence brought defilement. A 
gentleman who was seated near me caught the 
bewildered thing and with a very tender touch 
held it for a block or so until we came to one of 
the pretty parks that make our city so attractive. 
Stepping from the car, he loosened his grasp up- 
on the captive moth near a big syringabush that 
adorned the entrance way. He watched the 
dainty white wings flutter down into the cool 
seclusion of the blossom, then turned and board- 
ed the car and pursued his homeward way con- 
scious, let us hope, of a very pretty and graceful 
deed of kindness to a most insignificant claimant 
for protection and succor. Sentimental, was it? 
Well, God help the world when all sentimental- 
ity of this kind is gone out of it. 



LXIII. 

How poor the most of us prove to be when we 
take inventory of the soul's stock! We have 
lots of bonnets, and plenty of dresses, and no 
end of lingerie, we women, but how are we off 
for the things that count when the dry goods 
and the furbelows shall be forgotten? How 
about love, of the right kind, the love that en- 
nobles rather than degrades ; and how about loy- 
alty, and patience, and truth? If one of Chica- 
go's big firms should close its doors to take in- 
ventory of stock in January and find it had noth- 
ing but the labels on empty bales to account for, 
its poverty would be as nothing to the poverty 
of the soul we are going to schedule shortly be- 
hind the closed door of the grave. What slaves 
we are to passion; how we hate one another for 
fancied or even actual slights, when we have 
such a little moment of time in which to indulge 
the evil tempers! How we bicker, and lie, and 
137 



138 A STRING OF BEADS 

betray, the while the messenger stands already 
at the door to bid us begone from the scene of 
our petty conflicts. For my part, the interest 
we take in things that pertain to this perishable 
life, when we are so soon going where these are 
not to be; the choice we make of ranks and rep- 
utations, shams and seemings, dinners and wines, 
jewels and fabrics; the importance we attach to 
bubbles that break before we reach them; the 
allurements that draw us far from the ideals we 
started out to gain ; the way we content ourselves 
with the environments of evil and forego forever 
the voice that calls us away to partake of things 
which shall be as wine and honey to the soul, 
frightens me ; startles me as the sudden thunder 
of the surf might startle one who sojourned by 
an unseen sea. 



LXIV. 

If any young woman who reads this is contem- 
plating marriage with a wild and wayward man, 
hoping to reform him, I want her to stop right 
here and decide to give up the contract. As 
well might she go out and smile down a north- 
west wind or expostulate with a cyclone to its 
own undoing. If a man drinks to excess before 
he marries, there is no reason to hope he will 
learn moderation afterward. If you become his 
wife with the full knowledge of his habits, you 
will have no right to leave him or forsake him 
after marriage because of his unfortunate addic- 
tions and predilections. Once having taken the 
vows you have no right to refuse to pay them to 
the uttermost. And the life you will lead will 
be perhaps a trifle less pleasant than the life of 
a parlor boarder in sheol. 



139 



